Chapter 131

The Ant and the Grasshopper

Two Different Versions.

Two Different Morals.

OLD VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house, and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE OLD STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.

CBC, CTV and Global show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. The Globe and Mail does a feature story. Canada is stunned by the sharp Contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on CBC News with Adrienne Arsenault along with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, It is Not Easy Being Green. People Against Poverty stage a demonstration in front of the ants house where the news stations film the group singing, We Shall Overcome.

Then Justin Trudeau has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper. Chrystia Freeland condemns the ant and blames former Prime Minister Harper, Former Premiers Jason Kenney, Brad Wall and Cristy Clark and Conrad Black for the Grasshoppers plight. Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh explain in an interview with Rosemary Barton that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the Liberal/NDP coalition drafts the Economic Equity and Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the Summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs, not consulting with First Nations, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes; his home is confiscated by the governments Green Czar, Stephen Guilbeault, and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ants old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper failed to maintain It. The ant has disappeared in the snow never to be seen again.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize and ramshackle the once prosperous and peaceful neighbourhood. The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.

MORAL OF THE STORY:

Be careful how you vote in the next election.

I have sent this to you because I believe that you are an ant!

You may wish to pass this on to other ants, but do not bother sending it on to any grasshoppers because they would not understand it anyway.